Angel
by JenGambale
Summary: A short story about a very important part in Bella's existence ending.


**Disclaimer: **The Twilight characters belong to Stephenie Meyer, I claim in no way that they are my own invention.

**Notes:** This is the very first story I've written in English (or rather American). I usually write stories in German. That's why I ask you to have mercy with my grammar. I'd be very happy about Reviews. ^__^

**Inspiration: **During the writing process, I got inspired by a song by Avril Lavigne. It's called "Slipped Away". I think that song pretty much captures the emotions of this FanFiction. ^___^

**Angel**

I had known this day would come the moment I had decided to become a vampire. But as of imagining something and actually experiencing it, it shouldn't be surprising that the moment this day had finally arrived, it totally caught me off-guard. "My name is Bella Cullen," I told the nurse and tightened my grip around Edward's hand. "I'm a friend of the family. This is my husband, Edward." The second I said "husband", the nurse looked at me like I had committed a crime. Looked like she was one of the older-fashioned types although she was clearly younger than I was. Human years not included.

"Follow me, please," she finally said and turned around to lead the way. I exchanged a relieved look with Edward and walked forward. Both of us hadn't been sure if we should use our real names to get to Charlie. Jacob telling us that almost no one knew Isabella Swan anymore (except our former high school classmates but they had said their good-byes a while ago) hadn't really given me a peace of mind. But it seemed like there hadn't been much to worry about after all. "You know," the nurse began, "you aren't the first friends of the family to stop by. There is another … couple who is visiting Mr Swan right now." I couldn't help but smile. That explained it. Having two very young aged married couples in within one day would probably even feel weird for me. Although Jake's and Nessie's marriage was still quite fresh. I wondered why it had taken them so long anyway. Nessie's growth process had stopped nine years after she had been born. Now she had the physical shape of a 21-year old. Edward, the others and I had thought they would marry right away but it had taken them almost three decades longer to finally say "I do".

The nurse had led us to the senior station. The smell of urine and other feces stung in my nose and I could hear several dozen weak heartbeats. I tried to make out Charlie's but I couldn't. Instead, I could smell Jacob's familiar wolf odor that always made me wrinkle my nose. Edward seemed to smell it, too, because he grunted for the fracture of a second. I smiled. But that smile got cut off the moment the nurse said, "Here we are, Mr and Mrs Cullen." We had stopped at a door that was in the far-east corner of the station. I took a last deep breath (funny how in situations like these you don't need to act human because you FEEL fragile and human) and then entered, Edward right behind me, the room.

The first thing I noticed was Renesmee, who fell into my arms, squealing, "Bella! It's so good to see you!" Behind her, the heart-throbbing kind smile on his lips he used recently, stood Jacob. I smiled back at him while I wrapped my arms around my daughter. "It's good to see you, too, sis," I said. Whenever the four of us came together in public, Nessie and I disguised ourselves as sisters, since she had turned out to look more like me while she was growing. In a good way, not the plain human way. There was still a lot of Edward in her. Her beauty, for instance. Her eye color was now the perfect mixture between Edward's golden and my human brown eyes. They looked stunning but not too unnatural, so they didn't stand out too much for the human eye. Her hair had turned darker with the years, so they looked almost exactly like mine. Only a shade of Edward's bronze hair was left. She definitely had his lips and his ears. Her skin was very pale. A little paler than mine had looked when I had been human but still darker than my now pale-white vampire skin. She also played the piano so wonderfully and so like Edward that we all always had to check to see if it was her or him playing.

I had let go of her and wrapped my arms around Jacob now. He was still regularly turning into a wolf so he still looked the same. I remembered him telling me a long time ago that they only would start aging again if they decided to stop shape-shifting. At least, once they managed to control their temper. As I let go of him, I saw Charlie for the first time. He was, there was no other word for it, _old_. It had been more than forty years now since I had turned into a vampire but in all that time, I never had thought of Charlie as old. He had turned 82 this year and suddenly, he looked like it. He was connected to quite a few machines that kept his heart beating and his lungs breathing and his blood flowing. Cancel the last. I shouldn't be thinking about blood now. Edward and I had hunted last night so we were well-fed. I had been worried if I would be able to control myself in this situation. I knew, if I still had a beating heart, it would be racing of fear and sorrow by now and I probably would've started crying. I wished I could cry. Suddenly, for this moment, I wished my mortality back. I wished I was able to cry and mourn over my dying father the way a human was able to. But I couldn't. I had chosen immortality and I had to endure the consequences of this decision.

Edward had hugged Renesmee, too, and had given Jacob a small nod and now he was standing behind me. The nurse checked Charlie's condition on the screen, took notes and then left the room.

I sat down beside Charlie. He was asleep. His face was all wrinkly now but the familiar features were still in it. His mustache was grey, as was his now thin hair. Inside his chest, I could hear his weak heart beating. If Carlisle was here, I wouldn't need him to know that Charlie's life was close to the end. I felt Jake putting his hot hand on my shoulder. I grabbed it. He didn't flinch of the coldness and I was grateful for that.

We all rested there, me and Edward not moving at all and Jake and Nessie shifting legs and clearing throats from time to time, for at least half an hour without speaking. Then, after coughing loudly, Charlie woke up. His gaze wandered from the ceiling to his machines and from there to us. It took him a second (it must have been a second because his heart had beat once and the next one hadn't occurred yet, but it seemed so much longer for me) to realize that it was me, _really me_, sitting there. He coughed again and gathered enough of his strength to breathe a low "Bella" in my direction. "Dad," I said and took his hand without thinking. He winced, once he felt my ice-cold skin. I pulled back immediately. "Sorry," I muttered. He nodded and then moved his brown eyes, which still looked the same, up to Edward. "Chief Swan," Edward said, a kind smile on his lips. He had never stopped calling him that although Charlie had retired from the police almost twenty years ago. Charlie coughed again and then said, "Hi, Edward." "How are you doing, Grandpa?" Nessie asked and took a seat on the other chair. "Oh, well," Charlie began, now smiling, "I'm coming around somehow, Sweety."

But he must have lied. I knew that because I felt Edward freezing behind me. I didn't turn my head. Instead I quickly muttered, "What is it?" "He knows it's almost over," Edward answered quietly in the same speed. That didn't surprise me. Charlie had always been realistic. Sometimes a little too much. He had never wanted to know what we were, exactly. Well, he had seen what Jacob was but he had never said the word. He loved the normal, uncomplicated world without mysteries too much.

That's why it caught me off-guard when he cleared his throat and said in the loudest voice he could manage, "I wanna know." All four of us looked at him, stunned. For the first time in 43 years I had to ask someone to repeat what he said because I didn't get it, not because I had to act human. "What did you say?" He looked at me. "I. Want. To. Know. Now," he said in a very clear voice. "I want to know what you guys are. And from _you_" He pointed at Edward. "I want to know how _old_ you really are. My daughter clearly didn't marry a Junior." Edward and I weren't able to say anything for a few minutes. In that time, Renesmee took Charlie's hand and looked him deeply in the eyes. "Are you really, _really_ sure you want to know?" She seemed to show him things because he flinched a little. But he nodded. "Yes," he said, "it's time."

Edward and I changed looks. Then I pushed my shield away for a moment to think _Maybe you should start_. After a few seconds of hesitation, he nodded. He went to the other side of Charlie's bed, took a chair and sat down. And he told him our story. He began with Carlisle's story because with him, our own story started. Nessie didn't let go of Charlie's hand the whole time and seemed to show him pictures from time to time. Jake and I only sat, or stood in his case, there and listened. Then, he came to his own story. He told him, he was born 1901 and how it had come to pass that he had been turned. I could see that Charlie had started to do some math when Edward told him that because he had narrowed his eyes. I lightly kicked Nessie's leg and she showed him that Edward was now almost 150 years old. That didn't seem to surprise him too much. When Edward finished, Charlie said to him, "So Bella really didn't marry a Junior." "Dad", I interrupted him with a light grin, "both of us had already finished school when we married, of course he wasn't a Junior anymore. And, technically, I'm older than he is. I'm 18 and he's 17." Charlie broke into a laugh. "I guess so," he said and coughed again.

That brought me back to reality. To a human it may sound like he still would last quite a time but I knew better. An hour ago, when we had arrived, his pulse had been faster and in the time between then and now, it had steadily slowed down. And then there was Alice. She was the reason we had gotten here in time. 28 hours ago, Edward and I had been in Venezuela. We had gone to a night walk on the beach when Edward's cell phone had ringed and Alice had told us to come back to Forks as soon as possible. Luckily, yesterday had been a rainy day in Caracas, so we had been able to take the first flight to Washington D.C. and from there to Seattle. We had arrived in Forks in the early evening so visiting hours had already been over. We had stored our luggage in our little cottage and had gone off hunting with Emmett and Rosalie. We hadn't returned to the cottage after the hunt but gone with Em and Rose to the house. There, we had waited. Some time, Edward had started to play my lullaby on the piano and I had sat on the couch with Alice and Esme and like that, we had waited until eight-thirty. Visiting hours started at nine.

"Bells." I looked up. Charlie looked at me with an expression that was both proud and painful. I took his hand again. This time, he didn't flinch. "Yes, Dad?" He loudly cleared his throat. Then he spoke. "Bells, I just wanted you to know that I'm very proud of you. I know, I never really have approved of what you have become so long ago. A … a vampire." It was the first time he had said that out loud. I carefully pressed his hand to make it as light as possible. "I know, Dad," I said. "But I have always loved you no-matter-what. I'm really sorry that I decided this without telling you. I wish I could have. But I don't regret my decision. I'm really happy with Edward. And I'm really glad that I have Renesmee." My dad closed his eyes. "That's good to hear," he muttered. "Did Mom visit you?" I asked.

My mother had never known that I was a vampire. After the Volturi incident 42 years ago, Dad and I had decided to tell her that Edward and I had died of an influenza that we had caught on our honeymoon. It had broken her heart. But she would have never had the strength to understand what I had become. I think it would have broken her heart no-matter-what. There hadn't been a funeral, only an article in the obituary section of the local newspaper. From time to time in the last four decades, we had gone down to Jacksonville to check if she and Phil were ok. It had taken her some time but she had been able to gain her happy-go-lucky personality back. I knew she had plenty of photos of me in her living room, as well as the picture of my and Edward's wedding. One night, it must have been about 32 years ago, I had watched her crying over one of my photos. Clearly, the pain hadn't gone away completely but at least she wasn't in deep depression. It would have been very hard for me to watch that.

"Yes, she did," Nessie answered in his place. "She said good-bye last week. We were there then, too. It was really hard for her. I think she believes, with Grandpa, her last connection to you will be gone."

Mom had never met the "grown-up" Jacob when I still had been human. She believed Jacob had a son who he named Jacob. Jake had told me she referred to him as Jacob Black Jr. She saw the similarity to me and Edward in Renesmee, of course, but I guess she just ignored it. To her, Nessie was just Jacob's girlfriend.

I noticed that Dad's heartbeat had become slower again. There had been 40 beats per minute ten minutes ago. Now there were 28.

We heard someone come closer outside the door. He smelled of the sterile soap they used in the operating room, so he had to be a doctor. A few seconds later, he lightly knocked on the door and entered. "Good morning," he said in a friendly voice. We responded as friendly. The doctor introduced himself as Dr Poett. Jake and Nessie had been here a few times already, so he knew them. Dr Poett took a look at the screen and studied the papers on the clipboard he had brought with him. We waited quietly. After a few minutes, he sighed deeply. "I'm afraid it won't be too long now," he said and looked at us with a sad face. "It's only a matter of minutes. Is anyone of you family?" "My wife's grandmother was a good friend of Mr Swan", Edward told him to our surprise. I opened my mind again and asked him _What are you doing?_ He gave Nessie an inconspicuous nod and she touched me. He had read in the doctor's mind that only a family member could stay now and that everyone else would have to leave. "We were told that his ex-wife already sent her farewells, so Bella is the closest thing to family now," he continued. A sudden idea popped up in my mind. "To be honest, I was named after his daughter Isabella. She died before her time," I told him.

Dr Poett thought that over, we could see that. I didn't watch him as I began stroking Dad's hand. He had fallen asleep again. I watched Edward. A few moments later, he gave me a short thumbs-up. "Very well, Miss Bella," Dr Poett said, "you may stay. Unfortunately, I will have to ask you others to leave now. You can wait in the lobby." He kindly smiled at me and I returned a smile of relief. Nessie stroked my hand for a second, Jake gave me an encouraging pat on the shoulder and Edward gave me a light kiss on the forehead. Then I was alone. Dr Poett had taken Edward's chair and had sat down quietly in one corner of the room.

I didn't do anything but sit there and stroke Charlie's hand. His heartbeat slowed down with every second. I looked at his peaceful face and let myself remember the day I had left Phoenix to live with him here in Forks. Everything had seemed so miserable back then. The weather, the uncomfortableness of the two of us being together and having to build a normal father-daughter relationship. _Beep_. My first day at Forks High School. Gosh, had I been in a bad mood that day. I wondered how the lives of Jessica, Angela, Mike, Eric and the others had turned out. _Beep_. Had Jessica and Mike come back together? I didn't count on it. I had never looked at what they were doing now in all these years. Angela was probably a mother, maybe even a grandmother by now. I really could picture her with a child. _Beep_. I remembered the moment I first had sat eyes on Edward. He had looked so depressed when he had seen me. He had told me later that he had been like that because he couldn't read my mind. I remembered Charlie's face when I had told him I was dating Edward Cullen. _Beep_. He so had wanted me to be Jacob's girlfriend. My mind jumped further to the day when I had told him that I was going _marry_ Edward Cullen. He had been really good at hiding his real opinion by then. Then my wedding day. He somehow had looked really proud when he had seen me in my dress. The shock in his face when he had realized a few weeks later that I had become like the Cullens… _Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~ _

I blinked. His heartbeat was gone. Dr Poett stood up to turn off the machines. I stood up, too, and placed a deep kiss on Charlie Swan's forehead. I moved my mouth to his ear and whispered, "Good-bye, Dad. I love you."

When I left the building five minutes later with my husband, my daughter and my best friend, it was raining. At least the sky was able to cry in my place.

Six years later, I visited my mother on her death-bed. She thought I was an angel that had come to take her to heaven…


End file.
